What Darwin didn't know is that evolution is far slower than he expected.

Actually, evolution has been proven to be a lot faster than what Darwin envisioned.

Don't have time to go into it here and now, but evolving something like an eye, takes only about 250.000 generations, if I remember correctly. This calculation was done with worst case scenario figures. Probably are more correct numbers, and better explanation somewhere on google ;)

Probably was to hasty, what I should have written was: "The governing theories on the speed of evolution, have all come up with a result which shows that it is faster than what Darwin envisioned, and what can be seen in fossil records"

If only 250,000 generations (evolving in the right environment) produce MASSIVE results (like an eye when there was no part of one before), then we can look for REALLY IMPRESSIVE EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS!

Experimental results - backing up predictions - are the mark of "Hard Sciences".

With bacteria reproducing in 20 minutes (with optimum temperature and nutrients), a lab can produce roughly 30,000 generations in a year, and the 250,000 required (for MAJOR NEW STRUCTURES) in about 8 years!!!

One or two years alone should produce mind boggling results! Give us the links to these EXPERIMENTAL breakthroughs: all the news outlets seem to have missed them!

Last year we didn't know how to make stuff like that happen (adding an eye to an organism which never had any of the associated structures) by careful, deliberate manipulation. NOW, you say, we can get all that done by RANDOM PROCESSES!

About the rate of evolution. With the SENSE experiments in mice, which they also did with fruitflies, they bred the flies for several generations which had a 'long' life. In the 'end' they had flies that lives several times longer then normally.

Evolution is a form of selection. But in the current society, evolution is messed up, for better for worse. It's no longer the survival of the fittest/smartest or the best.

There are very interesting studies and programmes out there about "Artificial Life". They all create in software a universe with certain "rules" like energy etc. Then they create very simple life forms (algorithms) with basic functions (depending on the complexity of the simulation) like eating, sensor funtions like seeing, reproduction/replication.

The sims (you can download a lot of these programs on your computer, a starting point e.g. is http://www.alife.org/links.html) showed that the resulting algorithms were far superior than any a programmer could have produced.

Another interesting point was that parasitism was preferred.

The software available is really great to play god if you have spare CPU time and watch basic algorithms evolve into complex ones.

One final remark: We're not talking about artificial "intelligence" here, just simple "lifeforms" following the rules of the defined universe.

_________________"The hardest hurdle to space isn't the technicalities and money. But rather, the courage and the will to do it." - Burt Rutan.

I can also only access the first page, but you got the information to one of the "serious" studies, that back me up (although they where talking about years, not generations).

Survival of the fittest does not mean that we'll get a uniform perfection for all life. Some branches of the evolutionary may evolve something which they have better use for, then some other branch may evolve something else. You don't need a human eye when you live in the dark. A bee would not have much use for it either, and a hawk could never make any proper use of it, but for us humans, it's what was needed.

The sims (you can download a lot of these programs on your computer, a starting point e.g. is http://www.alife.org/links.html) showed that the resulting algorithms were far superior than any a programmer could have produced.